Logan Paul Gage

I am often asked what to make of Christoph Cardinal Schonborn’s new book Chance or Purpose? Luckily, I can now point people to Denyse O’Leary’s spot-on review. Among the many highlights, O’Leary notes that Schonborn focuses on knowing design not through empirical evidence but through natural reason. Yet if Darwinism is correct, true reason may not exist. Second, if Schonborn wants to oppose the fatuous conclusions of evolutionary psychology then he needs to oppose the supposed facts on which it is based. (Francis Collins makes the same mistake regarding altruism in The Language of God. He argues for Darwinian evolution and then argues against evolutionary explanations of altruism. Apparently he thinks the miraculous powers of natural selection can build the Read More ›

There is an interesting new education project under construction at Binghamton University. According to The New York Times:

Yet a few scholars of thick dermis and pep-rally vigor believe that the cultural chasm can be bridged and the sciences and the humanities united into a powerful new discipline that would apply the strengths of both mindsets, the quantitative and qualitative, to a wide array of problems.

Now, we’re all for combining the sciences with the humanities. Clearly we should be developing well-rounded students. But what I fear is

The January 2008 issue of Christianity Today contained a letter from Randy Isaac titled “Providence and Evolution.”

In his critique of Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion? [“The CT Review,” November], Logan Paul Gage fails to distinguish between scientific randomness and metaphysical randomness. By insisting that these two concepts are inextricably linked, Gage concludes that McGrath (and Francis Collins) maintain a position that precludes divine providence. Evolution is not a purely random process,

Ahem: something I never denied. But I interrupt.

Yesterday, The Diane Rehm Show on NPR held a discussion on the new National Academy of Sciences (NAS) booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism. To anyone with eyes to see, the booklet is a transparent attempt to label any criticism of Darwinism as “creationism.”

This evolutionary-evangelistic tract is so dogmatic Catholic News World said, the NAS “has produced a new text warning against the terrible danger that someone, somewhere, might not entirely accept evolutionary theory.”

Today I attended the release of the third edition of the NAS’s book Science, Evolution, and Creationism–by which, of course, they mean any way of thought which doubts the materialist mechanism of natural selection to account for the full complexity of life.

The entire event was a transparent attempt to label any doubters “creationists.”
Most ironic was that,

Dear Human Events: If Mac Johnson is to be believed, intelligent design (ID) advocates are Neanderthals–their theory “dressed up in a lab coat and a mail order Ph.D.” [“Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas,” November 15] Mr. Johnson regurgitates the tired falsity of Darwinists everywhere. Leading ID advocates have reputable Ph.D.s, and avid readers of Human Events (HE) know as much. Michael Behe does biochemical research with his University of Pennsylvania Ph.D.; Jonathan Wells does biological research with his U.C. Berkeley Ph.D.; Stephen Meyer researches the history and philosophy of science with his Cambridge University Ph.D.; etc. This kind of argument is called “poisoning the well.” That is, HE readers are supposed to dismiss ID scientists because they are not Read More ›

In this week’s National Review (December 3, 2007), theoretical particle physicist Stephen Barr takes on those who claim that the findings of modern science have banished the ideas of mind or soul. Barr, with whom many of us at Discovery have misgivings regarding his use of the word “random” in neo-Darwinian theory, nonetheless gives an excellent exposition of philosophy of mind’s intersection with contemporary physics in his article “The Soul and Its Enemies” (sorry: password required).Barr concludes: We see, then, that those who confidently assert that scientific discoveries have banished the soul to the realm of myth offer only a limited view of the evidence. Indeed, the very possibility of scientific discoveries points to man’s openness to truth and his Read More ›

For those of you who missed Dr. John West‘s lecture at The Heritage Foundation this week in Washington, D.C., it is now available online (look for November 6, 2007). West had a strained voice that day, yet he spoke eloquently on “The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.” In this lecture, he covers what he sees as five impacts of scientific materialism on public policy. If you like what you see, don’t forget to check out Darwin Day in America.

Have you ever spent time pondering the intellectual pedigree of scientism–say, of the Dawkins variety? It would be nice if folly really were an orphan, but unfortunately he is not. And Herbert Spencer was only one link, though an important one, in a long chain of Western scientism.

Consider this Spencerian quote from Steven Shapin’s recent New Yorker article “Man with a Plan: Herbert Spencer’s Theory of Everything“: